At the rate hobbyists are outdoing one another, actual airplanes will soon be thought of as mini versions of model planes. I only became aware of "giant-scale" radio-controlled planes recently (not sure how I could have missed them) when reporting on an rc fly-in near St. Louis. That story, which is here, has the basic facts and figures and dollar amounts. This post is largely a repository for pix and videos.

Before

After [for tons more like this, check out this guy's site. He's built around 30 supermodels.

An incredibly/painstakingly-detailed SR-71 cost more than $100,000 to make, a process chronicled in detail here.

No, not really. Maybe soon, though.

Here's a video of the world's largest RC plane -- not a happy ending, as the title suggests: are